Studio vet and sideman to the stars, Steve Ebert’s debut album, "If Dreams Were Horses," a chronicle of love and wild, wild life

AUSTIN, Texas – Guitarist and singer-songwriter Steve Ebert knows exactly what it’s like to live 20  feet from stardom. Like the subjects of the documentary bearing that title, he’s spent a significant  portion of his life sharing recording studios and stages with idols including Neil Young, the Bee Gees’  Maurice and Robin Gibb, Phil Collins, the Wailers, Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius, John Lee  Hooker, Jesse Colin Young and a long list of others. He’s played cards with Tennessee Williams. He  became tight with Young’s legendary producer, David Briggs. The Beach Boys recorded a song inspired  by a bar his dad owned in the Florida Keys (“Kokomo”). Oh, and he also trained marine mammals,  served as drug-addiction counselor and managed crews installing glistening glass on skyscrapers. 

But in all his decades of pursuing gigs, musical and otherwise, in Florida, Los Angeles, Nashville,  Austin and elsewhere, Ebert had never released an album of his own work — until now. If Dreams Were  Horses, recorded in Austin with producer Bradley Kopp (Eliza Gilkyson, Jimmie Dale Gilmore) and  several stellar sidemen who’ve also supported their share of heroes, took time to realize because, well,  that’s how life works. Ebert was so busy accumulating the experiences he chronicles in these 10 songs,  he simply needed to wait till the right moment to share them.  

Carrying influences from Stonesy blues to honky-tonk country, If Dreams Were Horses is perhaps best  characterized as Americana with a Western lean. Hints of wistfulness permeate Ebert’s gentle tenor as he  reflects about the women he’s loved and the memories he holds (including a few wild ones — all of  which he swears are true). 

Several tracks are about or inspired by the love of his life, his childhood sweetheart, Debra Weyermann. He wrote the title tune in the 1980s, when he had no idea where she was but couldn’t get her out of his  mind. 

“I had just finished reading The Horse Whisperer and the song just fell out,” he recalls. 

“All the Good Ones are Taken,” one of the album’s prettiest tracks, is about someone he met in Florida  who reminded him of his long-ago love. He didn’t pursue a romance with that woman because she was  about to marry another. 

Counting his first union — "a six-month, rock 'n' roll marriage” — Ebert would wed three times before  reuniting with journalist and author Weyermann 30 years after she’d gone off to college and left him  behind. (That event, combined with quitting his band rather than move to San Francisco to back former  It’s A Beautiful Day vocalist Linda LaFlamme, motivated him to follow his parents to Florida.) 

Ebert found Weyermann via Classmates.com in 2000 — and wrote “Home at Last” the day after the  phone conversation that reignited their romance. Its chorus contains the lines, “The moment that our  eyes met I knew / I'd never be alone again.” 

Unfortunately, Ebert did find himself alone again when she passed away 13 years later. That’s when he  wrote “Hole in the Moon.” In its touching chorus, he sings: 

“If I live a thousand lifetimes 

But have just one to choose 

One life to live all over 

I'd choose this one with you.” 

He also celebrates love in “Diamonds” and “Time.” The gorgeous picking on the latter, about platonic  love with a friend who helped him through his grief, is by Kopp, who handled all the acoustic guitar  work while Ebert concentrated on electric. That song also contains lovely fiddle work by Richard  Bowden (Terry Allen, Ryan Bingham), who played on several songs — except “All the Good Ones are  Taken.” The sweet, plaintive fiddle on that track is by Gene Elders, George Strait’s longtime fiddler,  who also played in Lyle Lovett’s Large Band for 10 years. Elders was supposed to contribute mandolin  to a few tracks, but asked to play fiddle on that one first because he was so taken with the song. He  passed away before he could finish the other tracks; his playing on the song is likely his final recording.  

The mandolin on the title tune is by Tommy Joe Hill, with whom Ebert had played in Hill’s Florida  band, Texas Crude. The lovely piano interludes are by David Webb (Jimmy LaFave), who played  keyboards throughout — except for the Hammond B3 fills on “American Music.” Those are by Robyn  Robins, a founding member of Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band (that’s him on “Old Time Rock ‘n’  Roll”).  

Drummer Kevin Hall (Eric Johnson, Jerry Jeff Walker) and top Austin bassist Glenn Fukunaga (the  Chicks, Alejandro Escovedo, Terri Hendrix) comprise the album’s rhythm section. Together, they help  Ebert shift seamlessly from ballads to the “kinda country, kinda rock ‘n’ roll” of “American Music” to  the honky-tonk of “Too Blue to be True” — a song Ebert wrote for Sweethearts of the Rodeo while  living in Nashville.  

“I had a band with Leonard Arnold, who was married to Kristine, one of the Sweethearts,” he recalls.

“The other sister, Janis, was married to Vince Gill. They loved the song, but their label had other ideas  on  

song selection.” Ebert had recorded the track for a never-released album by Southern Grace, his Florida  band, and when Kopp heard it, he wanted to revisit it for Horses. 

And then there’s “Harley Honey,” a blues rocker that could become an anthem for Harley-riding women  and the men who love them.  

“It’s about my about my third wife, Doreen, who was an actual Harley honey,” Ebert says. A  Philadelphia native, she was the daughter of an American Bandstand producer. Though the couple lived  in Philly for a while, Ebert never got to meet his estranged father-in-law. But the city is connected to one  of his favorite memories as a performer: playing “If You Don’t Know Me by Now,” with Harold Melvin  & the Blue Notes. Both the hit song and the band were born in the City of Brotherly Love.  

That moment also points to Ebert’s versatility as a player; not only has he jammed with Neil Young, he’s  performed with Pastorius and recorded with jazz saxophonist John “Spider” Martin. He's also worked  with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band, Double Trouble, including hiring them to play on an album Ebert  produced for singer Michelle Mayfield. 

Growing up in St. Louis, Mo., Ebert’s music-loving parents exposed him to everything from Beethoven  and Brubeck to the Everly Brothers, Nat “King” Cole and Johnny Cash. Like his dad, Ebert played  trumpet in his school band. But he also saw the Beatles and Stones in concert, and when he heard  guitarist Billy Sanford’s opening riff on Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman,” his love affair with guitar  began.  

He never developed a love for touring, however, and turned down invitations to hit the road with Jimmy  Cliff, Melvin and Benny (“Into the Night”) Mardones. 

“I was never really interested in touring,” Ebert says. “I loved writing, recording and producing.  Creation.” 

He still does — and is already looking forward to recording his next album.  

Says Ebert: “I feel like I’m ready to write my best songs.”  

If the tunes on this album are indicators of what’s to come, that’s going to be one fine collection, indeed.